League: Standoff over standoff

It has reached the point where the greatest danger in levelling criticism at the Warriors is that it will simply fall on deaf ears.

The team are parked in the lower half of the NRL table with a fatal attraction to falling at the last hurdle in matches, home crowds are smallish, the media are rummaging through their books, and evidence suggests chief executive Mick Watson is a domineering and erratic character who could be the sand on which their castle will fall. Good news is in short supply.

Not to mention that in a couple of weeks the Warriors will disappear behind a sporting extravaganza when busloads of rugby tourists hit town.

And that's just the Lions players and management. The team will bring a swarm of supporters eventually numbering more than twice the regulation crowd at Ericsson Stadium these days.

The really eye-catching, sensational thing to do right now would be to praise the Warriors. The trouble is, it is hard to find anything on which to base optimism for a club who should - but don't - constantly challenge for titles.

Compared with this landscape, it may seem picky to start analysing the individual blots.

But let's anyway.

When they pinned up the Warriors team sheet this week, you just had to gasp again and wonder at what kind of rationale is driving this club.

If there has been one millstone - in terms of playing personnel - around the neck of the Warriors it has been filling the No 6 position.

Even in the earliest days, before Watson and Watson came storming into town, it was a problem. The Warriors have had more standoffs than the armed offenders squad.

From the mid-1990s outset, the gifted Gene Ngamu could tear the likes of North Queensland apart yet also nudge inaugural coach John Monie towards tearing his hair out.

Ngamu could slay the weak but struggled against the strong. So Monie toyed with Greg Alexander in the halves, switching Ngamu to fullback - and a great Warriors tradition was started.

Top league teams and top standoffs go hand in hand. Zip over to the Warriors, though, and this year alone you will find the names Jerome Ropati, Lance Hohaia, Nathan Fien and Sione Faumuina listed at No 6.

In the history of the standoff roundabout, nothing makes less sense than this week, when coach Tony Kemp - himself a former Kiwi standoff - shifted Ropati to the centres for tomorrow's clash against the Roosters, so Faumuina could play at pivot.

The 20-year-old Ropati should surely keep the job. He has the size, good long and short kicking games, loves to run with the ball and fearlessly takes on the defensive line.

He looks the standoff part, running with the ball in front of him, and throwing quality passes on the run. By reputation, he has the nous for the game, but just needs time to learn it.

Players like this don't grow on trees here. Maybe the dominance of Polynesian power at younger levels stunts the development and enthusiasm of ball players and organisers. Maybe budding league architects feel a little redundant - if they can feel anything at all - as another freight train runs over them.

Ropati has the goods. He certainly didn't have a perfect test at fullback against Australia, but his two tries showed his class.

Yet how will Ropati, who has also played fullback at the Warriors, or anyone else develop in this critical position if they are continually shunted around?

The 100kg-plus Faumuina looks like a ballplaying forward parked in the backline, rather than a director of operations. And who would dare bet on him retaining this job.

Clinton Toopi - who might look at televised English games and remember when the off-loading Ali Lauiti'iti helped to make him a star - probably prays for Faumuina to return to the forwards so he can create holes on the fringes for the centre to work off.

Toopi - touted by the Warriors as a dual-code star when they were leaping about like lineout forwards chasing ownership of a union team last year - doesn't even rate a place on the bench this week. If ever you have seen a top footballer who looks dazed and confused by what's going on around him, it is Toopi right now. Nearby, Francis Meli is a shadow of the player he was.

The ironic aspect to this is that Kemp pointed the finger at Toopi and Meli this week. Meli, he said, was living on reputation, while Toopi had been spoken to about his lack of composure and had to stop letting his team-mates down.

If you read the familiar smoke signals, Meli may now be on the outer and not long for this whacky Warriors world. We shall see.

The suggestion, from various quarters, is that he has been unsettled about his future for some time. He is certainly playing like it.

As for trying to talk composure into someone ... you might just as well talk someone into running the 100m in under 10 seconds.

What players respond to is being part of systems they understand and believe in. Maybe Kemp could find more composure when he's selecting his team each week.

As I detailed in a story last week, chief executive Watson's erratic nature is the major unsettling influence at the club. There is a crazy core which pops its head up on the team sheet most weeks.

One of the few reliable traits is that Steve Price relentlessly carts the ball up, as does Ruben Wiki, although you always feel the Kiwi captain is a dodgy tackle away from another judiciary appearance. But the old pros can still turn it on.

The Warriors' consistency, though, is their inconsistency. Players are required to fill all sorts of positions, and critically this includes dummy half and standoff.

Little wonder that when the pressure goes on in the final minutes, they come up short.

Against the Roosters, Hohaia - who for all the world plays like a halfback - will start at dummy half while specialist Tevita Latu looks on from the bench.

The more the Warriors search for answers, the further they get away from the truth.